Manchester City Council apologises for the brown grass in Piccadilly Gardens

Manchester City Council has apologised to Manchester for the state of Piccadilly Gardens after freshly laid grass turned brown over the weekend.

Sprinklers were vandalised on what turned out to be the hottest early May Bank Holiday on record, causing the turf to dry out.

City centre spokesman Pat Karney told us: "It's not good enough for Piccadilly Gardens - the council should have picked up on the fact that the sprinklers were vandalised and should have prevented it. I've asked the chief executive to start an inquiry about why this wasn't the case.

"It was a combination of the sprinklers not being on and incredible heat over the Bank Holiday. Normally our Bank Holidays in Manchester are full of rain and cold so it was a very unusual set of circumstances - but that's no excuse.

"Hopefully people will see that we're onto this very quickly; it's a very special place for Mancunians and we will put this right.

"The minute I saw it I thought "yuk that's horrible - I wouldn't sit on that", so I do apologise to everyone in Manchester that it's got to this state. We need to find out what went wrong and to put this right in the next day or two.

"We've already got people digging it up and the specialist contractor will come down to decide whether to lay new turf or whether they can get the damaged turf back into action. It will look good in the end.

"This is at the centre of our city and people have such great memories of Piccadilly Gardens and they want to be proud of it - so it's up to Manchester City Council to make them proud. We owe this to the people of Manchester."